Abortion. No word ignites an argument so quickly. No issue resists compromise
so adamantly. Those harsh lessons, learned long ago by the American Congress,
had to be relearned by the United Nations population conference meeting
in Cairo. For days, delegates from 182 countries threshed and winnowed
the abortion language in one small paragraph, virtually ignoring the rest
of a 113-page document setting forth a 20-year plan for world population
control. Perhaps that was inevitable, since abortion touches on three of
the most contentious subjects in human discourse: religion, sex and politics.

In Cairo, as in Congress, the antiabortion side started from a religious
viewpoint. On Capitol Hill, Roman Catholics joined with fundamentalist
Protestants; at the U.N. conference, Catholics and conservative Muslims
worked together. But their baseline in both forums was the same: Abortion
is a moral evil. That mind-set has led to demonstrations, even murder,
at American abortion clinics. In Cairo, it moved some countries to oppose
any reference to the idea of ``legal abortion.'' Argued a delegate from
Guatemala: ``Legal abortion'' is a contradiction in terms, the equivalent
of saying ``legal robbery.''

Forces favoring legalized abortion are motivated at least in part by
sex. Access to abortion services has a practical payoff: enhancing the
ability of women to manage their fertility. But to many feminists, it is
also a powerful symbol of a much larger issue: Controlling their bodies
means controlling their future. ``How come we don't finally stand up and
say we're not talking about abortion?'' asks Frances Kissling, president
of Catholics for a Free Choice. ``We're talking about the role of women
in church and state.''

That is why the abortion issue is so volatile. The discussion is only
partly about medicine, or even theology. It is also about power between
the sexes, about changing gender roles, about the nature of families. And
Dan Quayle's back-to-family-values speech in San Francisco, delivered just
as the Cairo conference was erupting in disagreement, highlights the third
leg of the abortion triad: politics. Around the world, conservative politicians
like Quayle are playing on the real fears and anxieties generated by changing
family structures and the collapse of traditional mores. They are being
answered by feminists like Norway's Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland,
who told the Cairo meeting that abortion foes are guilty of ``hypocrisy''
for condemning women to the suffering caused by ``illegal abortions and
unwanted children.''

In Cairo, and on Capitol Hill, the Clinton administration has struggled
to navigate between these extremes. The rough consensus it has managed
to broker maintains that abortion should be legal but rare, available but
not desirable, a last resort not a first option. But as Bill Clinton is
painfully learning, consensus building is a high-risk occupation, particularly
when religion, sex and politics are all involved.